


After The Fall

by capitainpistol



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Dark, F/M, Sibling Incest, Twincest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-03-28
Packaged: 2018-05-18 09:28:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5922973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capitainpistol/pseuds/capitainpistol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kylo Ren being Luke and Leia’s son is what leads him to the Dark Side. Luke and Leia’s POV. Warning: Twincest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Begins a few months post-ROTJ and will eventually lead to TFA (*with some minor mentions of Legends canon, plus me just making shit up). Not explicit right now, but will be soon. Originally written for the tfa_kinkmeme but I lost the link! This fic is romantic Luke/Leia. If that squicks you, please turn back. If not, get ready for some incest angst and pseudo-Jedi philosophy. 
> 
> *two established Legends characters appear in minor expository roles in chapter four.

The Imperial Palace on Coruscant was an impenetrable fortress built to withstand a seismic shift. While the Empire struggled to rise out of the pit dug for them by the Rebellion, the structure was ensured to last. Vast offices, sleeping quarters and ship hangars made it the ideal head of operations. 

A testament to the Emperor’s prowess, built in aesthetic and philosophical opposition to its sister structure, the Jedi Temple. A direct line across the endless city had connected them, but Palpatine razed that temple which had watched over Coruscant and the galaxy for over a thousand years. The strong convergence of Force energy dispersed. The same way thousands on speeders would have felt jubilation and strength upon gazing at the ancient temple of justice, one would feel trepidation and dread when gazing upon the Imperial Palace. 

The Dark Side of the Force lingered in every corner and shadow. Obscure Sith designs adorned the walls, red marble on black stone. Symbols to conjure beasts in the mind. All visitors felt like intruders. The New Republic like occupying thieves. 

Reports of screams came in daily, but investigations never found the source. Religious gestures were created to ward off the evil vibrations. Even Mon Mothma and Ackbar voiced concern over staying in the Palace for too long. More than the visual association of the New Republic with the old regime, they took seriously the sense of dread that permeated the walls and infected their tired, wary soldiers.

The war was over. No one wanted to fight the ghosts. So long under the sway of the Sith, the Force was not unlike water about to burst through a crack in a dam. 

Pass the high command offices and down below the squadron hangars, the feeling of overwhelming relief flooded the haunted castle. Inside one of the large, domed fighting gyms were the children of Skywalker, the strongest users of the Force in the entire galaxy. 

The twins fought with devastating weapons naturally attuned to the Force. The Light Side surging through them in harmony with their sparring.

Leia Organa attacked with all of her strength, lunging and gaining. Talented, thought Luke Skywalker, but overextending. She struck hard and fast, her mind on a future where she already won. 

Luke deflected her blows, on the defense since the fight began. Leia used the Force different than Luke that he couldn’t gage or emulate. Though it made her strong, it also widened her blindspot.

Leia was too entrenched in her speed to notice. She spent most of her days delegating, sitting, skipping Jedi Meditation techniques Luke taught her and closing her nails into her fist for want of punching politicians.

Luke valued patience, but Leia had seen him brawl in the mess hall with his famed squadron. More than once! 

Her feelings sparked, threatening to blaze. Not just anger, she’d always had a good relationship with her anger, but frustrations and concerns. She never spoke about it because it was a given, but she worried for the next year, the next five. The next ten.

The Force rushed through them. Luke accepted it like a calm warm wave, visualizing the immediate future. Hands coming down in a curve. Bright. Relentless. Leia saw the future through the eye of a hurricane, reaching farther than the here and now.

She grunted. He focused. 

Steadying his breath, Luke kept up with Leia. Soon, she would tire. 

Soon.

Leia smiled. Tired she was, but she wanted to win. She blocked a hit so hard Luke stumbled back several feet. He stopped, and then paced, letting his legs breathe a while. Letting his lungs breathe a while.

He shook his head and pointed his lightsaber at Leia. “You’ve been practicing.”

“True. Also, you’re not as good as you think you are.”

Luke laughed. “You want to win.”

He spun the lightsaber to stretch out his wrist… and to show off. Round and round it went, the light thrumming. Leia mimicked Luke’s movements, deciding she didn’t like it. Pageantry was for the Senate.

“I’m going to win,” she said.

“That’s why you’re going to lose.”

Luke lunged, and took Leia all over the empty gym. They smiled through gritted teeth, pushing, testing, discovering. The fight could’ve been a draw, but Leia couldn’t wait. She brought her lightsaber down in a two-handed arc. Violent sparks ignited when her weapon met Luke’s. 

Luke laughed as he held her back. Leia smiled as she pushed down. His peace and precision united perfectly with her wrath and determination. 

Brighter sparks burned at their cheeks. The ends of Luke’s dark blond hair singed against the white-hot vibrations of their crossed lightsabers. The weapons shook, stronger on Leia’s end, signaling combustion. The subatomic energy pulled at their hands. 

All Luke had to do was angle his lightsaber to set off a reaction in hers, but Luke hesitated, not wanting to hurt her. She hated losing, but she’d rather not end up another Skywalker without a hand.

And suddenly, unbidden, the Force culminated its power in a flash deep in Leia’s mind’s eye. 

Vader.

His blood flowing through her veins… Luke’s veins. 

The future fogged. The Force beckoned. Her anger transformed to inexplicable, confusing rage.

Did Vader bleed like normal men? She didn’t think so. Never thought so. His blood was black and glistening, thick and congealing.

Her father. 

She saw him and then did not see him, did not think of him. Luke was all she would accept from Vader. In that millisecond of a moment, Vader’s face contorted back to the terrifying helmet, deeper and darker than the vacuum between the stars. 

Despair entered Leia’s heart. 

Bail Organa was her father. She didn’t need another. 

Leia’s lightsaber gave out a deep rising electronic hum, the metal hilt glowing red and burning her fingertips. Leia flung her weapon as far as she could throw it. 

Luke embraced her, his robotic hand gently bringing her head to his chest; his other hand aiming his lightsaber to stop the random blasts that would have seared them. He wasn’t sure what happened, only that it happened too fast for him to properly understand. 

Luke and Leia looked at each other, amazed and not the slightest bit scared as the crystal exploded. His forehead shone with sweat, hair wet against his temples. Before she reached to comb the strands sticking over his eyes, Luke did it to her first.


	2. Chapter 2

Leia watched the crowd carefully. Coruscani were an eclectic bunch. No one here, including herself, was indigenous. A Toydarian flew around, goading the onlookers, taking bets on Luke. Too many were willing to believe Luke would magic the Civil Committee into giving him the ships and supplies he needed for a deep space mission. 

Leia took that bet. Luke would lose the hearing, but not because he wouldn’t use his Jedi powers to convince the judges. He would lose because he was too honest.

Seeking out the Force sensitive, bringing them back. Training them in the Jedi arts on Coruscant where they once flourished. Giving the galaxy a purpose beyond reconstruction. A dream Luke wanted to share.

The judges heard missionary. They heard searching, finding, children, taken, far away worlds. A nightmare.

And Luke Skywalker had nothing to barter with.

A disturbance rose in the Force, slow building terror snaking through the crowd. Leia felt similar forebodings when audiences turned to mobs. After years of being cheated by the Emperor, paranoia and caution ruled the Lower Tiers of Coruscant. 

Leia wished she had her lightsaber. She wouldn’t actually hurt anyone. Maybe threaten them a little.

“We are gravely sorry, Master Skywalker,” said the head of committee. “But what you are asking is tantamount to… to… to slave trading.”

Leia nearly jumped out of from under her cowl, but the chamber erupted ahead of her. The final verdict did not sit well even with the most opposed. Luke Skywalker was already legendary. They did not want to become known as the faction that turned him away. 

Her twin hid his pain well, but the accusation cut Luke deeply. 

Anakin Skywalker had been a slave, as was his mother, their grandmother. Schmi Skywalker’s grave on Tatooine was nondescript, a tombstone in the vast open desert not far from Boonta Eve, where Anakin won the podrace when he was slave. Luke had taken her to both places, sharing with her a burden of legacy no one else could possibly understand.

An obscure timeline had been building in Leia’s mind since the vision of Vader three months ago. Though her sympathy was lacking, she was nonetheless engaged. How _did_ a slave boy become a feared Imperial watchdog?

Leia did as she always did when uncomfortable thoughts about Vader invaded her mind. She focused on something else.

Luke could sway the crowd to his side, but without a dishonest bone in his body it’d be difficult. Promises needed to be made. Empty promises, but it’s what people needed to hear. Luke bowed without another word and made his way out. The Force sensitive in the crowd felt his disappointment as keenly as their own, and when they became quiet, everyone else did as well.

Leia met him half way back to the Imperial Palace. The Lower Tiers had a terrifying reputation amongst those above, but the sections not given to waste recycling and their gigantic worms were fully developed xenodivergent towns. Bail Organa made sure Leia knew her way around for when they made unofficial visits and settled unofficial scores. 

Luke sensed her before he saw her. “Sneaking up on a Jedi is impossible.” He smiled proudly. She could mask her presence now. 

Leia dropped the unseen Force veil. Pure warmth and affection soothed his troubled mind. She walked right up in her black cowl, the tail of the black robe dragging behind her. She didn’t like the cloak, even though it was an exact cut of its fitting white counterpart. Nevertheless, it had the desired effect. No one recognized her.

Twining her arm into his, she got them back to walking. “If I wanted to sneak up on you, I could have. I was giving you time.”

They walked in silence. Luke staring up at the tall and imposing silver buildings stretching up to the cloudless sky. Leia staring ahead, where his speeder waited. Luke followed the steady stream of speeders and their repulserlift underbellies moving nonstop on the magnetic lines, one row going left, the other right and so on and so forth. From down below it felt like they reached all the way to the stratosphere.

“You’ll get approval,” Leia said, bringing him back to the surface. “It’ll take time.”

The Lower Tiers were never completely empty, but they went on unrecognized. A few minutes ago Luke was denied for being Luke Skywalker. Now he was no one. The whiplash was worse than ten tons of g-force.

“You like it that no one knows who you are,” observed Luke. 

“I value my privacy, yes, but anonymity is one of the first big compromises you make when you’re entering the public life.” Leia pulled him to her. “This is nice, but it’s temporary.”

Luke nodded, thinking about her words seriously. 

He lived in anonymity on Tatooine for 19 years, desperately wanting to live amongst the stars, do great deeds and become known. Now his great deeds were tempered by reality, and his fame placed more restrictions on him than ever. Luke wondered if that was the Force maintaining balance, or if it was just his naiveté being stripped away, one hard fact at a time. 

Leia slowed down to give them more time. She reached into her concealed sleeve pocket and gave him the coins she won for betting against him using the Jedi mind trick. He looked at her incredulously, about to say something, when she began again.

“The second thing they teach you at the Legislative Youth Program is the majority of the public doesn’t care if you are in public life.”

Luke nodded, biting down on his laugh. He pocketed the money. “I’ve heard about that program. They came to Mos Espa once, but the Hutts ran them out. How old were you when you were recruited?”

“Nine. And I joined voluntarily. The only way I could travel with my father.” Leia took a deep breath, remembering. “Alderaan was a beautiful place. I wish you could have seen it. White was the color of peace. Difficult to maintain clean, but worth the hassle, I think. Black is depressing.” She tugged at the triangular collar that hung at his neck, exposing some of his collarbone. “And so very serious.”

Luke laughed quietly. They got to the speeder. He didn’t need to ask her where she was going, and she didn’t need to ask him. They would be separated soon. 

“I thought you’d make more betting against me,” he said.

“I bet against you using your Jedi powers. They were all expecting it.”

“That’s why I didn’t do it.”

It was Leia’s turn to laugh. “Sure. Not because you’re a goody-two-shoes.”

Luke put on a jovial front, but she felt his unease like a mounting pressure. 

“Is that in the Jedi handbook?” Leia asked half-jokingly. “Along with the very serious black ensemble?”

“You know as much as I do, Leia,” he said. “More, I think.”

The Emperor had all the Jedi records on Coruscant deleted and dispatched special teams of misinformation to eradicate and distort Jedi knowledge in the rest of the galaxy. Collectors slipped data crystals as well as paper volumes through the Black Market, smuggled along with valuable art. Leia herself sought pieces of Alderaan’s rich creative history to the give her quarters in the Imperial Palace a kinder atmosphere.

Leia took his hand again, entwining their fingers together. “You’re right, I _do_ know more.” She made him laugh, but the laughter was not in his eyes. “Look. The Force has taken on many forms because the Empire banned any practice. So not only are you up against a million factions more than if you were in in the senate, but you’re holding that up against the restrictions you put on yourself. You’re giving yourself too many rules instead of one clear-cut goal. Thinking of all the paths you can take instead of focusing on the destination. It’s like when we spar, when we get to spar anyway. You’re not thinking about form or position, but you know exactly what to do because you feel the Force and let it lead you. Am I starting to sound like Yoda?”

“Much clearer, actually.” He spread out his fingers against Leia’s. “How do you do it?”

“How do I do what?”

“Anger. Frustration. Yoda told me those emotions led to the Dark Side, but you’ve never been tempted.”

“Oh, haven’t I?” She stared at his calloused and scarred hand. Years of water farming and pod racing and working with them had made them strong. “Maybe it’s not that anger and frustration leads to the Dark Side, maybe it _might_ lead to the Dark Side. A small but staggering difference.”

Luke looked at her. He took a deep breath, letting himself feel the frustration of his wasted efforts. Trying to find a balance in himself, Luke soon lost his train of thought. The frustration overwhelmed, morphed to anger, to anguish. He’d never get out there, never restore the Jedi Order.

“Hey,” she said, leaning in closer. “Let it out. Feel it and then release it.”

Luke didn’t know how he did it, but the power coursed through him, and before it threatened to completely overcome him, he channeled the anguish as if he were in a match, focusing on what he could use and not what could use him.

Blue electricity sparked between Luke and Leia’s fingertips, tingling their senses and their skin. Both laughed nervously, feeling even more connected through the Force. A question in both their minds: this was the Dark Side? 

It couldn’t be. 

The electricity stopped. The frustrations weren’t all gone, but Luke’s mind was clear. 

“Maybe they’re right, Leia,” he said carefully.

Leia was ready to bite his head off for saying such a thing, but her comlink beeped and Han’s voice broke through. “Is he with you?”

“The Force had a funny sense of humor.” Leia didn’t need to ask Han who he was asking for. She opened the connection. “He’s with me.”

“Tell him to get up to the Falcon. That’s the good news. Want the bad news?”

“Let me guess.”

“Mothma needs you. Something about a swarm. Didn’t ask why.”

“Don’t you worry about that.”

“I wasn’t,” Han said cheerily. He beeped out.

Taking a cue from Han, Leia decided not to worry about Luke. An adventure would help him focus. 

“If there’s no crisis, when do you actually deploy?” Leia asked.

“Tomorrow. 400 hours.”

Leia nodded. “I’ll wait for you and we can talk before you leave. Or am I going to have to pull rank?”

Luke gave her the keys to the speeder. “Take it. Han and I have a rendezvous point. I can make it from here.”

“What are you going to do? Fly?”

Luke grinned. “Actually, yes.” He caressed her arms, and suddenly, he wanted to kiss her. 

The thought came quickly as it did in random moments, his crush still not completely crushed, but it did not leave. Somehow he knew they weren’t going to meet tomorrow, or the next day, or many days after that, and it made him long for her in the same way he had longed for her so long ago, before they knew the truth. 

Luke shut his eyes and shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said, as if he actually went through with it.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” said Leia quietly. 

She kissed him on the cheek, lingering there the way she did moments before Yavin. And the same as then, Luke felt the kiss engulf his heart and soul, filling him with joy. He could do anything. 

He could even kiss her again.

Luke leaned in slowly, brushing his nose against hers. Waiting for her to pull away. Leia didn’t. She accepted his kiss, and then hugged him. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said again.


	3. Chapter 3

“You have no idea what I had to go through to get this thing.” Leia gave him a cracked crystal the same color as a sunstone. Her new lightsaber would be white, her favorite color. He turned the crystal over in his fingers, feeling the Force inside of it. 

Luke took that as an invitation. He focused, trying to penetrate the wall she’d purposely built against him. All he managed to do was stare at her lips and the swash of pink tongue she occasionally passed over the bottom one when she messed up the construction of her lightsaber. Leia kept him out without the need to look him in the eyes. He may have been a better fencer, but she was a diplomat. The defenses came naturally.

“Another demonstration of your prowess,” he said, always impressed.

“What I can I say? You make me strong. Even when you’re not here.”

They shared a long look, equally solemn and grateful. Another couple of months had passed since they’d last spoken, this quiet type of meeting becoming a rare treasure. The moment passed, and they went back to assembling the lightsaber. 

Leia was supposed to build it alone, but she had rudimentary knowledge of engineering and very little patience. This was her third lightsaber. Luke was sure that was some kind of Jedi violation.

Around Leia, Luke could focus on an aspect of the Force he wasn’t quite used to: pushing it outward. Almost ignoring it. Trusting pure instinct. Leia did it naturally. It’s what made her a great leader. Politicians had a similar affinity with the Force, but unlike them, Leia was aware and did not make use of it. Her new connection to the Force offered her peace of mind, guided her through the rougher aspects of delegation. She more readily recognized a dangerous situation, but that was an innate skill. She didn’t need the Force to five her a few minutes heads up.

What she did use was her lightsaber, and again, in her own manner, not the way it was written in a rule book.

While they rarely appeared together in public, Luke and Leia, the polar opposite of any twins in the history of the galaxy, appeared together with their Jedi weapons. Leia was known never to wield hers, and it had given her an aura of calm, confidence danger. Her private all female guard, training in the Jedi arts under her tutelage, used theirs freely in her stead.

Luke didn’t like the design, too long and thin, the absorption coils ready to burst at the least provocation. Leia had it engraved, Alderaanian and Jedi symbols carved expertly into the titanium. It did not surprise him when the hilt turned out to be heavy. The crack in the crystal meant it would be erratic and difficult to wield.

In its own way, it was powerful. Attuned to the Force completely. 

“It’ll blow up in your face,” he exaggerated, snatching it away from her before she slammed it on the table and altered it. Again. 

Leia stood up and slumped onto Luke’s little pilot’s bed. “No more Jedi training for me.” 

“You’ve said that before,” said Luke.

“I mean it this time.”

“You’ve said _that_ before, too.”

“I have, haven’t it?” She laughed, starting to touch the little built in shelves around the walls of Luke’s bed. He had pictures, trinkets, pieces of paper, a datapad, and junk stuffed on the various little insert boxes. 

She didn’t like how small his quarters were. Rogue Squadron made quarters of the wing that was originally for a platoon of stormtroopers who answered directly to the Emperor’s chief of staff. Leia shared Han’s apartment out in One District, nearest to the Imperial Palace. They were barely in it, but it was spacious and had several rooms. Leia had one ready for Luke to stay when he came to dock on Coruscant, but he preferred to stay with this squad.

Luke worked a little longer on her lightsaber. “If you use it correctly, it should hang nicely. No terrifying explosions.”

Luke threw it at her, and Leia had to choose between yelling at him or coming out of the bed to catch it. 

She caught it, and it instantly turned on. The white blade extended, long and thin, stretching farther than any lightsaber she’d ever seen or had. 

“It’s beautiful,” she said, waving it in the strokes Luke had taught her. The hilt shook in her hand, but she squeezed hard, taking control of it.

He came up behind her, screening his body against hers, and gently taking her hand. “Careful.” His other hand wrapped around her and pressed up between her ribs. “Don’t hold your breath. Hear that?”

Leia breathed out softly as Luke pressed his cheek to hers, his usually soft and unassuming voice loud and urgent against her ears.

“That’s real bad music,” he said, unaware that he had caused Leia to close in her eyes, feeling his calm strength settle her kinetic energy. Their arms moved in unison, the lightsaber glowing bright in front of them. 

Luke breathed a little harder. “It means you can’t use it for very long at any given time.”

Leia turned it off, and turned to face him. Better safe than sorry. She handed it back. Luke couldn’t turn it on. Leia watched him try, amused to no end. 

“First I didn’t have enough connection to the Force and now I’m full of it!” Leia grinned, shaking her head. “I’m still not entirely sure how it’s necessary. Knowing the future is tricky business.”

“Unless you’re taking bets.” Luke finally got the lightsaber to bulge and accept him. The thrumming hum louder than before, the white-hot laser near sparking. Like a loyal animal, it wasn’t responding well to another master trying to control it.

Leia covered her mouth to stop herself from laughing. “I knew that bugged you.”

“The gambling doesn’t bother me.” Growing up on Tatooine made one an expert in the trade. “It’s the disturbances I have felt while making the Corellian Run.”

Leia stopped laughing. “I was hoping you weren’t going to bring that up.”

“So you’ve felt them as well.”

Leia couldn’t say exactly that. She was becoming worried for Han, who could make the Corellian Run with his eyes closed. “I haven’t mastered the art of reaching yet, but yes, I’ve felt something.” 

Saying it aloud frightened her. The reports were slow to come in, but they were coming. Raids at an alarming rate, patrols finding more hit and run missions, derelict ships. 

“Coordination points to a centralized leadership,” she told Luke. Although she was taught to never make assumptions, she would stake her life on this.

“A few splicers have come forward with intel. It’s not looking good, Leia.”

Leia nodded. “As if Bakura wasn’t enough. If we can survive a swarm, we can survive anything, right?”

“Right.”

She needed her own splicers to get the data streams from the spaceports in and around Corellia, which, besides being highly illegal, was one of the stranger planets to operate in. Luke handed her the datapad with the black market drop spots, the Corellian Run a safe and neutral section to trade with anyone who had enough to barter.

Corellia was part of the Core and active in galaxy politics, yet it was deeply nationalistic with a practiced policy of isolationism. Neat trick considering the best spaceships in the universe were built form the ore in its mountains and planetary crust. Imperials and Alliance alike took out contracts and had their ships constructed on the planets smooth surface factories.

Han told her to always trust a Corellian smuggler, not just because he himself was one, but also because they had a deep desire to get the hell out of the Corellian cloud.

Leia thought Luke might finally burst and say something about it, voice his fears, but he took a deep breath instead and meditated briefly on their new enemy. “There’s nothing I can do about it now,” he said. 

“I knew you would say that.” She moved further into the bunk to let him slide on the other side. Their legs tangled for warmth. 

The Imperial Palace was in a perpetual state of cold, not quite stifling and not quite comfortable. Groups had a habit of sticking together. 

Leia took hold of his ankle, caressing him up to the calves. They were thick from pushing against g-force. Luke took a deep breath and dropped his head back. G-force took its toll on his whole body, not just his legs. He had a tired, mature look to him now, and there was even some gray in his thick hair. He was too young to be out there all the time. Part of the reason she wanted a Jedi school back on Coruscant was to keep Luke close, far away from some battle out on the Outer Rim, fighting the last dregs of the Empire.

Luke took another deep breath, savoring each second Leia kept her hands on him. He dreamt something like this many years ago, and the sudden realization that it was happening snapped his eyes wide open.

“Leia…”

The change was electric, instant. Neither could voice it, but it was there, flowing from one to the other. She came forward, inches apart from his face, her hands wandering to trace the muscular contours of his arms. His heart beat like a soft drum against her fingertips. He had a musk she didn’t remember him having before, and it made her aware of how much older he was than when they first met. 

“You still see me as that boy who saved you,” he said. “Even though I’m older than you.”

“You’re not.”

“I was born first. I’m sure of it.”

Leia laughed softly. “Ok. You were born first. But you saved me? I distinctly recall grabbing your blaster and opening a certain garbage shoot.”

“ _You_ don’t seem to remember what happened afterwards. Giant recycling worms. Almost dying.”

“We saved each other.”

Luke closed his eyes, sighing deeply the way he did to compose himself. Leia would leave him soon, and he missed her already. 

Luke went back to the Tatooine in his mind, devoid of Hutts and gambling and bad business. Leia could not see the two suns of his home world, but the warmth of its rays tingle her skin, a part of his memory becoming hers. Luke found solace there, but as always, it came with the tragic legacy of their family. He’d never ignore it, even for a moment.

Leia wanted to fill him with memories of Alderaan. Of waterfalls and green valleys. Of the constant parades and celebrations. Of their gods and saints and heroes. She could only push against the Force, channel it from another strong point to herself, not pull it through her. 

Peace and serenity filled their bellies, heat spread skin to skin. Leia wasn’t searching, but she found it all the same. In Luke’s serenity was his crush for her. Not dead like she thought it was, after Hoth. He had learned to love her as his sister and friend, a struggle he bared in silence. Leia combed the hair out of his eyes. She hesitated for a brief moment, taking in the longing in his eyes. He was sure he was in a fever dream, but his Jedi training served him well. He controlled his breath and waited.

Leia planted a soft kiss on his lips, testing the waters. Luke had yet to lay his hands on her, but by the second and third kiss, he had her by the waist. 

They’d kissed before, but never for the pleasure of it. She had kissed him to make Han jealous, and he kissed her to say goodbye. She never failed to embrace him when welcoming him back after a long time away. Lastly, they kissed when one of them was in pain. 

This was a different kind of pain, an aching slowly relieving itself. Leia felt it too, but where Luke’s ache was romantic, his longing bursting with passion, hers was curious, urged on by adrenaline. She connected with Luke in ways she couldn’t with anyone else. She kissed him harder, challenging him, and he accepted, finally giving in to his secret desire for her body.

This was new, but exciting, like sparring, discovering how the other moved. When they came apart, Luke helped Leia straddle him properly, her sex grinding against his erection.

“Leia…” He said, breathless.

Luke put his hand over hers as Leia reached down, meaning to stop her, but at the slightest pull he let her go on. She slipped her hand underneath his pants and grabbed his cock, stroking him up and down to make him harder. 

“What are we doing?” 

Leia answered the question with a hard, insistent kiss, coming away sucking on his tongue. Luke crunched the sides of her dress in his hands and lifted the fabric up over Leia’s hips. Pass the curve of her breast and up over her head, disheveling her braids. Her naked body supple and toned, skin itching for his touch. He caressed the cute muscles of her abs, and higher to squeeze her breasts and thumb her nipples.

“Your hair,” he said, staring into her dark eyes. “Let it down.”

Still grinding down her sex on his cock, Leia obliged. Her brown hair cascaded to her shoulders. “Anything else?”

Luke held her as her hand pulled his cock out of his pants. He was looking on her, combing back her hair and taking a fistful around at the back. His biceps contracted as he adjusted them, firmly holding on to her on his lap.

Luke bit down on the last spark of doubt as she took the bulbous tip of his cock and glided it between her folds to her pulsing clit. They looked into each others eyes, not quite believing what was happening, knowing they could stop, relieved neither wanted to. They kissed again, slowly this time, and with ease. Luke planting a smaller kisses on her lips and jaw when they came apart. The wetness spread between her folds, drenching his cock. They embraced, increasing speed, fucking and not fucking, sharing the pleasure, until Leia finally guiding him inside of her. Her moans and his groans stifled in each others necks.

Leia touched his face the way she had a million times before, his eyes still soft as he fucked her. He nuzzled her neck and smelled her hair, grabbing a handful and pulling slightly as his cock slid in and out of her. 

Luke turned them, laying Leia on her back, quickly removing his shirt and pants. He took his pillow and set it below her bum, lifting her toward him. Leia waited for him to fuck her, but he was waiting too, drinking her in once again. He had her always wanted her. 

His hands held on to her thighs, touching her softly and slowly, coming higher and higher, teasing her, until finally he entered her again, rubbing her clit and thrusting in and out of her until she came, shuddering underneath him.

Leia pulled him back down to her, Luke pounding into her hard, his orgasm building. Leia grinned, not used to coming first, finding Luke’s energy was expelled outward. She said his name, urged him on. “Let me hear you,” she said, over and over. “Let me hear you.” Luke let his groans out in longer grunts, thrusting hard at her command. 

Leia opened her legs wider, her hands grasping the spare pilot’s bed. Every thrust brought Luke closer to his end. Her mouth, once gaped open, closed, teeth biting down the harder Luke fucked her. He lifted himself up and continued, staring down at her with a fierce determination, completely falling apart with a ear splitting shouting release. 

Luke did not slump over her. He kept himself up with his arms, sweat glistening his temple, his neck, and his chest. Leia caressed him all over. The serious fierceness vanished, and his eyes were soft again, his smile serene. 

Luke kissed her forehead and turned over on his back, blissfully exhausted, but as he breathed, the Force returned. Somehow, in all of this, it had left them, it’s presence muted by the intensity of their lovemaking. 

Their hands came together, fingers entwining, fidgeting and playing. Luke knew things would never be the same again. 

Leia draped a leg over his. Her fingers raked his hair. He looked on her with a new weary wisdom, but she kissed him to stop him from speaking. She knew as well, things would never be the same, but he kissed her back, tenderly and sweetly. They would never has this again, and they agreed without words to indulge in every second before they parted.


	4. Chapter 4

_Nine Years Later_

Ben didn’t hesitate before jumping the full twenty feet to the terrace on the adjacent building. Being eight, he was too light to cause himself any mortal harm, and too young to expect anything less than a perfect landing. The pain and snap came at the exact same time. Ben saw it the instant before it happened, but couldn’t stop it. He’d rather the Force tell him where the patrol speeders would be, so he could evade them. The fall guaranteed his capture. His angry cry alerted half the hemisphere. 

The patrols hovered high above in the sky, small torpedo arms ready and pointed at him on the terrace. He felt the Force sensitives amongst them, knew they were _in his mom’s pocket_. He didn’t know what that meant, but he’d overheard it in the Imperial Palace. He heard a lot of things about his mother and father in the Palace. 

Ben made sure to remember everyone’s name. His mother said people wanted to be remembered. They were communicating now. Sian and Winter. He called to them through the Force, about to make contact, form words in their heads. He had never done it before, but he was sure it would work.

Just as the message took shape, a powerful scent shook him out of balance. His mother called these moments disturbances, instances when things were out of place, wrong somehow, unseen and strong. Ben had been attuned to these disturbances so long he wasn’t afraid of them. He caught them like smells, and this one tickled his nose with sulfur and gasoline. Another presence. 

Ben did not know what to so say for fear of it leaving completely.

The voice echoed like a recording on an old taper, blasted beyond its capabilities. Distant but deep, it filled every hollow corner. Yet Ben knew the patrolmen couldn’t hear it. “Who are you?”

“My name is Ben,” he said cautiously. He was taught to be up front in first meetings, but never reveal too much. 

“Ben,” repeated the voice.

Ben focused… and he heard the voice’s soft fading laugh following the repetition of his name.

“You are strong,” said the voice, louder than before.

Ben smiled. He looked at his leg. The bone was broken, and blood drenched his foot, but he couldn’t feel it at all. “I can’t do it for very long,” he said self-deprecatingly. He was a natural born climber and builder, and he could fly if he really had to, but he was strongest in his Force abilities. “I’m the top of my year. And I’m joining the Legislative Youth Program! My mom-“ Ben stopped himself. He realized without much understanding that he was saying too much. Again.

Ben thought the voice might be gone forever, but it spoke again. 

“This is not your home,” said the voice.

“No.”

“My home,” said the voice, “is very far from yours. I cannot talk any longer. My powers are not at their full potential. You have assisted me. Next time…”

Ben smiled. “Next time?”

“If you wish to speak again.”

Ben didn’t think on it very long. “Yes.” The flashing patrol lights blinded him and he found himself talking out loud to the speeders. “Wait! Who are you?”

A strong wind hit Ben in the cheek, the chill reaching to the broken bone. The Force left him in one instant chest biting push, and he felt something he had never felt before. Exhausted. 

“Come on, little one,” said a familiar woman’s voice.

She wasn’t dressed in Coruscant patrol fatigues, neither was any kind of emblem on her armor and suit, but he recognized the woman in the white striped with black uniform. Winter. His mother’s personal aide. The woman next to her, dressed in the same uniform but inversed colors, black striped with white, was Sian. Both women served under his mother during the Galactic Wars.

Sian walked to the edge of the terrace and waved at the patrol they had just narrowly convinced were under no jurisdiction to arrest Ben Organa-Solo. “It’s alright, fellas. This is a diplomatic incident.”

From the static in her comlink came the captain’s voice: “Another one!”

“Please file a formal complaint with your local representative!” Sian activated the terrace canopy. They were separated from the planet-wide city and it’s flying policemen in seconds. 

The internal lights came on, and the house droid entered, stuttering.

“It is… It is.. It isss… It isss nice to have you ho-ho-ho-ho.”

Winter picked Ben up in a strong swoop. “Please shut that thing up.”

Sian went over and kicked the droid lightly on the side.

“Home, Senator Weyl,” finished the droid. 

“And erase it’s memory,” said Winter, not exactly proud of that command. 

The droid was missing pieces. It’s green and silver color gone, parts of it scratched and others rusted, showing the wires inside. It couldn’t tell who they were, much less process memory data.

“No!” Ben screamed. “Let’s take it with us.”

Winter and Sian exchanged looks. Abuse of droids wasn’t unheard of, but it was generally accepted that doing so meant something was severely off with the droid owner. 

Sian capitulated and sighed. “Fine. Let’s add grand larceny to your charges, kiddo.”

Ben tried to sit up in Winter’s arms, but she held him. She wouldn’t call him Kiddo. Han Solo called him that, so everyone did. The boy loved it. 

“Dad says smuggling’s good sometimes,” Ben muttered when Winter didn’t smile.

“You tell that to your mother,” Winter said, more concerned than angry. Her mistress called Ben mischievous. The private guard called him the bane of the galaxy, and as captain of those guards, Winter wholeheartedly agreed.

Sian picked up the droid. “Who did this to you, little one?”

The droid stuttered. “Sn-sno-snnnnnnnnnnkkk-kk-kkkk-kkkk.”

“It’s gibberish, Sian. Let’s go home,” said Winter, who waited at the door. “You know how the princess gets when this one wanders.”

“I know,” Sian said. 

She stared at the droid, wondering if the acceleration of its tone and pitch meant it was afraid. She never could tell with astrometrics.

Both women left Senator Weyl’s home through the front door, as if an eight year old hadn’t just crashed into the place. The ride to the Imperial Palace gave them enough time to fix Ben’s broken bone. The boy watched as he was stitched up by the little med-droid. It started the skin graph over his wound where the bone had been set, but then it skittered, beeping questions at Sian and Winter.  


Ben stayed close to the stuttering droid, trying to teach it his name, ignoring Sian and Winter. They came back to bandage him up, the skin graphing done with temporary synthetics.

Leia spotted the diplomatic transport from the top hangar of the Imperial Palace. Once it landed, her son came out running. She did not bother opening her arms. Han was just coming out of his Falcon behind her. Ben made a predictable beeline straight for Han’s arms.

Han lifted Ben up over his head and had one leg over each shoulder in less than two seconds. Ben could barely control his laughter, so Leia took deep breaths for both of them. No matter how many times Han did that, it scared the hell out of her.

“Heard you went skydiving,” said Han, already swooping around to make his son laugh. Leia managed to stop them for a moment, grab Ben’s good leg and bring Han down so she could kiss her son. The bloody boot made her cringe, but Ben did not mind it.

“Mom ugh,” Ben said, pushing her away.

Han repeated the words and kissed his wife before going back to asking his son too many questions that were congratulatory.

Leia called after them. “We have a serious discussion on coming, young man.”

Ben and Han waved in the exact same motion, headed towards the Falcon’s main hatch. 

Sian and Winter had waited, not daring to approach their mistress while she was with her husband. The women were still speechless from the discovery aboard the transport, and all they could agree on was the Force guiding them to absolute secrecy.

Leia approached them. She didn’t need to be a Jedi to gage something was troubling them. She noticed the little sick droid that had skittered out of the transport behind them. “I’ll have to fight for custody of the droid too, I see,” she said by way of greeting. 

The poor thing beeped in acknowledgment and struggled towards Leia, crashing into her legs instead. “Go to your new master,” she said, pointing. The droid rolled towards the Falcon. 

Winter took a quick breath. “There was an issue with the skin graph, Princess.” After a quick look at Sian, she continued, “We were able to fix the bone, and the synthetic will have to be replaced, but he lost a bit of blood. We always carry a pint of replicated stock, for you and General Solo. But we were out of yours…”

Winter’s complete loyalty to Leia prevented her from judging her mistress, but even she grasped the implications of this. She could not bring herself to say it out loud. Her old Rebellion spy instincts kicked in. Anyone could be listening.

Han Solo was not Ben’s father.

A long tense silence followed. Then Sian spoke. “The record is wiped clean,” she told Leia in confidence, easing her commander’s mind. “No one will know.”

No one knew Darth Vader was hers or Luke’s father until the moment they did. “These things have a way of coming out,” she told the women. 

Sian and Winter instantly thought of the news hitting the HoloNet. There wasn’t a day the counter factions didn’t fabricate some story about Leia and her close team of confidantes. Sordid reports, affairs between staff, the scandalous type of news to make up for the lack of war reports. 

A clever splicer could be paid millions to sift through information and connect the dots. Of all the rumors, it was the most dangerous for being true.

Leia’s heart did not bleed outward to the galaxy, to the ruination of her reputation. Her heart ached for her husband and son in the Falcon. She heard them tittering inside it, setting off sparks, banging pieces of junk together with more junk, somehow making the Falcon wake, like a sleeping giant rousing from sleep. 

Leia reached for the future and saw Han’s face. Sadness filled his eyes, betrayal his soul. 

“They won’t, Princess,” Sian promised. 

“I’ve rearranged the itinerary for the next few days, please look it over,” said Leia. How else to end the conversation? She smiled at them, letting them know they weren’t being air locked for delivering an important message. 

Han came running out of the Falcon with Ben tucked underneath his arm. Ben hobbled along, exaggerating his boredom. “You hear that, sweetheart?!” Han set Ben down. “Uncle Luke’s on his way back. The hermit!”

“Point one, the Force,” muttered Sian. 

The much needed joke, strained at it was, made Leia smile. They were Jedi, these women. Lightsabers hung on their belts same as hers. All of them were trained to discern movements in the Force. 

“Mom,” Ben bemoaned, tugging at her jacket after being released from Han's hold. “Who cares about Uncle Luke? Want to know what happened to me before I crashed Weyl’s place?”

Han grinned. “You should hear him. The kid’s a natural.”

“A natural, huh?” Leia tried to be serious, but all she wanted to do was to hug her son tight and apologize. “I would love to hear all about it, but I have to go and settle all that red tape you tore in half.” 

Ben’s eyes popped. He leaned back into Han, taking hold of Han’s big hands as they wrapped around his little shoulders. “You just got home,” he reprimanded her. 

He learned that diplomatic trick from her. Diverting the conversation.

Han steered it right back. “That was the plan,” he said. “But this is a big deal, kiddo. Senator Weyl’s a big deal.”

“I didn’t mean to crash into his apartment,” he said. “Please take me with you.”

Leia knelt in front of him. “We’re going back to Yavin Four. I need to make sure everything goes smoothly. You’re not in any trouble.” She gave Ben a big long kiss on the cheek, and then came back up to hug Han. “I’ll meet up with you and Luke back home.”

Han gave her a long kiss. They’d done this a thousand times, with Ben crushed in between them. 

“I wanna go with you,” Ben told Leia when they finally came apart. “I’ll pay the route taxes. I wanna see the Ewoks again.”

Han laughed. “You’ve been saving up?”

Ben’s eyes popped once more. He sometimes sold old coins on the Lower Tiers to Imperialists who still collected those things. “Yeah,” he said, petulant. 

“Oh really,” said Leia. 

Han was smiling, feigning innocence. The wind blew his hair every which way, early dawn rising behind his famous ship. Han could ask her to marry him again, she’d say yes again. 

That didn’t mean she stopped being the bad guy. “I told you not to go there with him anymore,” she said. “There’ve been riots.”

“You know how he wanders.” Han kissed her again, failing to mention that it was Leia who started taking Ben to the Lower Tiers in the first place. “So, Sir Luke finally graces us with his presence. Chewbecca’s still mad at him for leaving.”

“Chewbacca’s mad.”

Han shrugged. “You know how the furball gets,” he said. “He’s gonna be pissed when he comes back from Kashyyk and Luke’s gone. Again.”

“Hey!” Ben looked up at Han. “You said pissed!” 

Han smiled down at him. “Shit. I’m sorry.” Ben gasped and Han covered Ben’s ears. “No way am I putting another credit in his cuss jar.”

Ben pulled Han’s hands down. “No way?! You already owe me for the last two times. And right now when the compressor ripped off you said fu-“

Han covered Ben’s whole face with his big hands, leaving a small opening for his tiny nose. “He’s lying.”

Ben muffled voice came through: “Nmmmoimmmnot.”

Leia kissed Han goodbye, and instead of Ben’s usual disgust noises, he hugged her. She rubbed the top of his head. “I’ll see you tonight, I promise.”

Luke descended in an X-Wing ten minutes after Leia’s private transport departed. A personal X-Wing without any New Republic markings. A closer look told Han the thing was hand-built.

Technically, one-hand built. The canopy opened and Luke took off his helmet, his newly designed electroprosthetic a shinier black than his clothes. The silver and gray mechanics inside were smooth and perfectly contorted to normal size. Must have cost him a fortune.

Luke jumped out of the X-Wing and gave Han a big, long hug.

“How you doing, kid?” Han pointed to Leia’s transport, one moving dot amongst thousands. “You just missed her. She said to wait up for her but you know how she is. Ben come-“

Ben was nowhere to be found. He had run back into the Falcon. 

“The kid’s a galactic incident waiting to happen.”

Luke laughed. “I’ve heard.”

“You’ve heard? You just got back!”

“I’ve been back a few days.”

Han pondered that a moment, picking up on Luke’s tone. Serious, but nothing they had to worry about just yet. Han couldn’t believe the kid had been in the Outer Rim and Unknown Regions for three years. “Come on, let’s take the Falcon for a spin. We’ll even let Ben drive.”

None of the stories Luke heard about Ben involved speeders of any kind. “Is he any good?” 

Han let out hearty ha. “Not if you mind a couple of head on collisions.”

“Never did.”

“Didn’t think so. Let me put it this way. He’s as good a pilot as Leia is with a lightsaber. Marvel and tremble, my friend.”

They flew for hours, circling around the whole of Coruscant and making it back in time for dinner. Ben kept to his bunk, talking to his little droid. When stopping for lunch Luke watched as Han took Ben aside and told him the droid was beyond repair. The best they could do was dismantle it and sell the scraps. The mere suggestion drove Ben into a sulk that lasted all the way back home.

Luke had emptied his heart of expectations long ago, but it moved him to see Ben. A healthy boy, tall for eight years, serious in ways Luke never was. Ben wasn’t aware of all that he had, the freedom which Han and Leia gave him, letting him run and roam around the Falcon. With the constant commotion of public political life, they forgave Ben his childhood curiosities, even if they happened to involve what the daredevils on Coruscant called skydiving. Jumping from building to building for who knew what reason.

The latest news around the Coruscant scene was that Ben Solo had evaded another crash with the law, all thanks to Leia’s pull as the First Minister. No one seemed to get the age right. Ben was either six years old, a little wonder kid, or he was nineteen, the same age as his mother was when she entered public life. The HoloNet had already reported Ben’s breaking and entering into Senator Weyl’s apartment. No one could find Weyl for comment.

Han talked about it after a couple glasses of thick purple Nubian wine. Ben had gone back to the hanger to play in the Falcon. His other droids forgotten for the dying one. Although they had been friends for years and family for longer, Luke and Han never just sat and drank in a house that belonged to one of them. 

“He’s going to be upset when the thing finally croaks,” said Han about Ben and his little droid, already dreading the moment. “He’s strong kid, but fragile too. Believes he’s invincible.”

Luke’s heart sank. He kept his distance with Ben and so knew very little. “That’s good.”

Han laughed at that. “It’s good that his mom runs half the galaxy because everyone’s too afraid of her to say anything.”

“Give me names,” said Leia. She entered right as the conversation turned away from Ben. 

Han didn’t get up. He watched the twins approach each other slowly. Unlike the explosive hug Luke had given Han, Luke wrapped his arms around Leia almost hesitantly, like if at any moment she might disappear. When they came apart, Leia caressed his face and kissed him on the lips.

“All right, you two. Time to get drunk. Or half-drunk. We do have a child. Somewhere.” 

He poured Leia a drink and refilled Luke’s. 

Leia vented, Han needed advice. Luke listened, captivated. Nostalgia nowhere to be found. The Empire was gone, but they were still cleaning up after it. 

Leia reached her limit, but Han decided and Luke agreed they needed one more top off. He left Luke and Leia to talk as he went to the storage hangar to grab more wine.

“Have you spoken to him?” asked Leia. Not seeing Ben in the main salon of the apartment wasn’t unusual, he wasn’t used to staying at home, but she kept looking around for him. 

Luke came in close. “Here and there. I don’t think he likes me. Besides, what would I say?”

Guilt squeezed Leia’s heart. She had come in close as well. Her knees touched his. 

“You haven’t said much,” said Leia. “I have a network of spies out keeping tabs on you. They’ve said more.”

“Is that who those guys were?” Luke asked with the drawl of his younger self. He smiled and softly touched her face. “First Minister Solo.”

“I know. Can you believe it?”

“Of course I can.”

“I’m serious, Luke. What’s going on with you? Every time a new Empire rat comes out of hiding, I think, this is it.”

“I know.” In the nine years since he left, Luke had reunited with his friends and the Republic to stomp out these Empire rats whenever they emerged. His own adventures were less hectic. Luke had discovered the observer in himself. And the more he saw of the universe, the more convinced he was he had more to learn. 

He focused on Leia, let her see his journey in abstract feelings and instincts. Leia controlled her breathing as Luke’s hopes and dreams flowed within her. 

Luke had wanted to go out into the galaxy and search for Force sensitives, create a new school for Jedi, but he had been naïve in his first attempts. He was traveling not to find Jedi, but for them to find him.

“Older sensitives, they’ve had tough lives. Their powers developed with all that makes them unique and strong. Jedi training started young for a reason,” he said. “But that can’t be how it’s done any more. Children can’t be taken from their homes and forced into a way of life that denies the life they could have or would’ve had. If the Jedi Temple had helped our father…”

Leia stiffened. “If the Jedi had helped Anakin, then,” she finished his thought, working through it herself. The anguish that came with Vader’s memory faded quickly, replaced by a detached understanding. “Then we would’ve grown up together.”

“There’s a better way,” said Luke. “We’ve been trying to figure it out.”

Leia was glad not to speak of Vader. “We?” She asked instead.

Luke grinned. “I’ve met someone.”

She smiled. “Yeah?"

Luke took a moment, staring at her that way he did. For an instant, he had the same reverent look in his eyes he had that night, when they were together. “A woman. She’s like you. Stubborn. Smart. Beautiful. I finally get it now. Why you and Han fight so much.”

Leia nodded. “The make up sex.”

“The make up sex,” he repeated, nodding back in agreement.

“Leia!”

Luke and Leia jumped at her name, going fast to the hangar where the Falcon was docked. Luke felt a disturbance in the Force just as they went inside, and one look at Leia told him she felt it too.

The little dying droid was completely mangled, beeping its last. The pieces were everywhere, the pipe used to break it by his little pillow. Han had Ben in his arms, the boy crying into his neck.

“What happened?” Leia asked, pulling Ben out of Han’s arms and taking him in hers. He was becoming too big for them to keep doing that. 

“I was coming out of the storage hangar and heard Ben beating it,” said Han. “That’s when I called you.”

“It’s weak,” Ben sobbed. “It was weak.”

Leia held him tight and walked out of the Falcon. “Honey. Why? Why did you do this?.”

Han and Luke stared at the dead droid. Luke knelt and touched the pieces. “Something else happened here,” he said, not liking the strange vibrations in the Force that surrounded them. 

Han was shocked, the haze from wine completely gone. “Ben’s a bit on the careless side, but I never thought... Look at this thing.”

Neither of them said it. Ben hadn’t just destroyed the droid. He had beaten it to death.


	5. Chapter 5

The general wave of feeling towards the Speaker’s passionate imploring was positive with slight tremors of concern. Luke felt it coming up the steps to enter the Forum where open elevators swooshed him up to the First Minister’s private booth.   
The Forum was rebuilt as an exact replica of the Old Republic Forum. Thousands of new systems entering the New Republic had representatives in their own circular detachable booths. Ideally, anyone could take the floor.

Luke had visited hundreds of systems and stood in many arenas, big and small, to address those who could make things happen. He felt for the Speaker. The builders did not take into account the awe-inspiring size of the New Republic Forum. Luke had trouble addressing even a hundred people, let alone the thousands whose voices carried to the far reaches of the galaxy.

Leia did not rise when Luke entered her booth. She drew him down next to her, kissed his cheek quickly, and went back to staring up at the Speaker. 

The current Speaker was only slightly older than them. The screens surrounding the dashboard all bore his picture, the inner system echoing his voice as if he were in the booth with them. His story was much like theirs and the many others who fought in the Galactic Wars 13 years ago. Recruited to the Rebellion from an Outer Rim planet after an Empire attack, part of the Yavin offensive, agent of the New Republic. He was talented, even Force sensitive. 

Leia leaned over, elbows on her knees, listening. She stared up at the hovering booth hundreds of feet away instead of the screens illuminated with the Speaker’s face. Luke leaned forward, mimicking Leia’s posture, but his attention was still on the physical Forum itself.

“What’s that festival on Tatooine?” Leia asked.

Luke smiled. He had been thinking this was the opposite. “Boonta Eve.”

Boonta Eve was a few technicalities away from being a bloodbath. 

Then the Speaker said the wrong thing, and Luke once again marveled at the sight of perfectly reasonable sentient beings turn to loud, uncompromising animals. Leia’s liking the Forum to Boonta Eve was now apt.

He shook his head. There were an endless number of things that separated all sentient beings from each other, but there were just as many things that bound them all as one, like the need to shout to be heard.

Luke recognized the Speaker on the screen. A face buried in his memory. His Jedi powers allowed him to go back through the hazy past and pick out a brief moment where they met during a crisis after Endor. There were many of those. 

“Nothing’s getting done today,” said Leia, rising. “Let’s go.”

Once outside, Luke stopped trailing alongside Leia and watched her silently fume until she noticed he wasn’t beside her. Half way down the steps, Leia turned back to him. 

“I see you don’t meditate,” he guessed correctly as he stepped down.

Leia had a fire inside her that never blew out, try as politics might. She sighed heavily, the Force vibrating around her without her provocation, announcing her sentiment to his heightened senses. 

She was tired, more so now than ever.

“It’s either sleep, eat or meditate. You know which one I’d choose,” she said.

“Speaking of…” Luke stepped closer so she could hear it: his stomach growling. 

Leia smacked his shoulder. “Great. I’m starving too. I know a great little place that serves live Tython pixies.”

Leia made sure no patrols were around before unlocking the repulserlift magnetics and flying manually to the higher spheres. The speeder began to beep at the crossing of the lines, where it was considered very illegal to fly. Luke turned it off for her. 

“Everyone thinks I drive like a madwoman.”

“You do,” said Luke.

Leia had little regard for lanes or general straight flying. She liked going up, like turning, and the faster the speeder went the wider her smile became. Luke had to remind her not to close her eyes.

The Forum disappeared behind them, and they went up and up. The little place was little indeed, but Leia failed to mention that it floated between clouds over one of Coruscant’s highest districts. A rare steam powered booth vendor that could barely cover a parsec in a day.

Luke sat with his feet dangling over air, the city thousands of feet below him. Leia was kidding about the Tython pixies, but Luke observed the other crab like beings in water. He decided against eating them and bit into space rations the vendor also sold. Without any cams and rush hour just fifteen minutes ahead, they were completely alone. 

Luke felt her through the Force. “What’s troubling you?” He asked.

Leia answered with a question. “Don’t you smell the blood on the wind?”

Luke focused. Not so much blood but a stench, one that had gotten fainter the higher they went up Coruscant City proper. “I’ve heard about the strikes.”

Leia chuckled softly. “Worms can’t strike, Luke. They’re hundreds of years old, bred to consume waste, and suddenly they aren’t working any more, because they’re in solidarity with the Lower Tiers? Please.” She shook herself as if to forget it all. 

Luke briefly looked down, taking comfort in the clouds underneath. Hundreds of thousands of feet below, beneath the citywide planet, were massive recycling worms that stopped Coruscant from succumbing to its own filth. 

One day they’re fighting the Empire, the next they’re glorified garbage men. Everyone from the Speaker to Leia to the leaders of the unknown worlds Luke visited felt the stagnation.

“How’s Ben?”

Instantly, he felt her block him. She may not practice any more, but her Jedi skills were active. He could see the lightsaber hanging on her hip. He swore he saw it shake and shimmer the air around it at the mention of Ben. Leia had modified it. He clipped it off her side and examined it.

Leia reached for it, but Luke moved it away, grinning, doing it again two more times before Leia gave up and answered his question.

“Ben is… Ben.” She said noncommittally.

Luke didn’t need the Force to feel her apprehension. She didn’t want to talk about Ben then, and, in truth, neither did Luke. 

He gave her back the lightsaber and gently wiped clean a bit of food that had gotten on the side of her lip. The pattern they had avoided by staying apart reasserted itself. They let themselves be drawn in but it was too dangerous. His lips fell on her cheek, lingering. 

“I miss you,” he said. 

The words I Know hung in her thoughts, but she didn’t say them. The mention of Ben made her tense. “Then come home.”

“Leia…”

Years of discipline and composure made her back straight, yet she felt something drop inside of her. If he wasn’t so damn sincere. “Why not?” 

“Because we’d be living a lie.”

Leia felt the anger rise in her. “You said that quickly.”

“I’ve been practicing.”

Leia pressed her nails into her palm to stop herself from laughing, and gave him a cold look. “Practicing? What else you got?”

“I’d rather not do it from up here.”

“The Palace is closer than our place. This better be good.”

The ride to the Palace was silent. Leia made herself follow the correct lanes, just in case she wasn’t as in control as she tried to be. 

She thought of Ben and how drastically he changed since he inexplicably beat that droid to its last screw. That was the last time she saw him crying, begging for Han and Leia to soothe him with hugs and kisses. 

Now he was grave, studious, and he avoided flying. Han never asked anymore if Ben wanted to come along on the Falcon. Ben chose to follow Leia. A serious little shadow who met with Senators and leaders with that watchful, paranoid eye one only gets after years of being jaded by government.

Worst of all, Leia could no longer feel Ben through the Force. He could stand right beside her and all she felt was a distant presence. Ben seemed to be searching, looking out not at the stars, but at some secret hidden in between them.

Then there was that other troubling feeling in the Force…

“Leia?”

Leia landed the speeder on the main hangar atop the Palace, unchanged in three years. “Sorry.”

Luke jumped out of the speeder and helped her dismount, his hands on her hips. “I have an idea,” he said as their stomachs touched. 

With her First Minister title, it wasn’t difficult getting into their old gym. Leia took to one side, Luke to the other, and they removed their robes and extra layers to fight in their tight fitting clothes, Luke in black and Leia in white. 

Luke smiled as Leia switched on her lightsaber and twirled the thrumming white sword, adjusting to the feeling of it in her hand. The blade had rarely been used beyond a decorative capacity.

“You aren’t the only one who’s been practicing,” she said. 

“I see.” 

Luke had practiced bits and pieces of a thousand speeches every day he has been without her. All the reasons they couldn’t be together didn’t resonated so well as all the reasons they should, but it had been their choice to stay apart. Lying would have shattered them. 

Leia preferred this to hearing any of them, and so did he. She lunged, attacking first. 

Luke blocked her blow with expert ease, sending her back several feet.

The more they fought, the easier it was to keep up, until they came to a crushing abrupt impasse not unlike many, many years ago. This time Leia’s lightsaber did not crackle and shake. Luke’s resolve shook first. He had tried to gage her senses, but she used the Force to protect herself, block him out. 

Ben, Luke thought suddenly. 

Leia took herself out of the fight and turned off her lightsaber. 

Luke hadn’t realized how long they had sparred. He was sweating. His hands still trembled. He breathed heavily, avoiding Leia’s gaze.

“Tell me, Leia,” he said. The Force squeezed his heart with a pain that was neither guilt nor regret. 

Something was going on, and they weren’t wide-eyed Rebels anymore, overcome with confusion. 

“How can I tell you when I don’t know what’s going on?”

“There is a way.”

He took her hand and brought her down to sit across from him. She didn’t hate meditating, but found it difficult. 

“Let’s see where the Force takes us,” he said.

They closed their eyes and steadied their breaths. Their fingers touched, and for a brief moment they let themselves feel that longing for each other, the memory of their night together existing as it was, not what it led to. 

After a few minutes of silence and long, deep breaths, the twins Skywalker felt the Force. Opposing feelings swirled around them. The Palace’s Sith designs still potent with the dreadful aura of that order. Years of New Republic command had infused inside of it a ceaseless hope, but to little effect. Unlike Luke and Leia’s sparring, these feelings were in constant fusion, pushing and pulling as the people’s minds changed. 

Leia did not like the familiarity of it. The sense that nothing was being done, that old mistakes were being repeated. 

The twins saw the future in broken shards, reflections of war cutting their eyes, destroying their hearts. 

And on the edge…

Someone.

Waiting.

Patient.

Strong.

Leia could never pin it down, but with Luke’s help they found _something_.

_Snoke._

“Ben,” sighed Leia, opening her eyes.

She did not understand what she just saw, but she understood more than she did before. 

Luke held her hand tight, sharing her dread, but he was not looking at her. His eyes gazed beyond her shoulder. 

He stood with Leia as Ben entered the gym and approached them. The boy was all in black, a dark robe draped over his shoulders. Although he was only eleven, he was tall.

“Han is here,” he said to both of them.

Luke found no warmth in his eyes. The last time he saw Ben was three years ago and the boy had been sick with fear, crying in Han’s arms, completely devoted to him, but the way he said Han’s name. So formal…

“Are you two finished?”

Leia would’ve dropped then and there, she had never been so afraid for her son. “Give us some time,” she said to him in her First Minister’s voice. 

Ben bowed, and after a long look at Luke, turned to leave.

Leia turned to Luke and it took all of her strength not to wrap herself in his arms. “What are we going to do?” 

“He’s young yet,” said Luke. “We’ll figure something out. I promise.”


	6. Chapter 6

The mask had withstood fire and storm and cold, empty space. The mechanical voice alternator was damaged. Not unfixable. A durable design. Luke admired it.

It sat on a mantelpiece inside a mausoleum inside the main the Temple, a pyramid on the outside and a church and labyrinth on the inside. Vader’s mask sat like a crown waiting to be picked and placed. But the crown was misshapen and dark holes stared out where eyes should’ve been.

He sealed the mausoleum electrically and on the quantum level, his Force powers easily folding around the open spaces to block any interference. No one would get in. Everyone slept. Rey was nestled in her mother’s arms, snoring. He’d left his wife a private holo message on her com that would ring until she picked it up. He told her to load the essentials into the transport, he was going to find them a ship, get everyone away from the Temple.

The ancient fortress was a death tomb, and the uncovering of Vader’s mask portended an ominous future.

He sped out of the planet on his X-Wing early in the morning, without alarming anyone, having done it many times before. He headed straight for Leia. 

Snoke remained distant and Ben’s refusal to acknowledge his existence made it all the more difficult to find and confront him. A cowardly enemy was dangerous, but a patient one was worse. There was a presence in the Force inside the Temple pyramid. Something inhuman, and the Padawans were reacting.

Luke made it to Leia’s tier with barely a drop of fuel, and, like always, he could sense her through the Force the closer he got to her. 

Instead of channeling all of his energy and focus into calming himself with his preferred visual, Luke reminded himself The Dark Side and the Light were in constant flux. One might be heavier on the scale than the other, but all it took was understanding and patience to decide where to put ones weight. 

He _had_ patience. He’d had patience his entire life. He had it on Tatooine for nineteen years, had it in Bantha tanks, recovering from deathly wounds as his squadron banged on the glass. He had it for the nine months Leia carried his child, when he made himself feel nothing of Ben and so nothing of her, to not influence the child in any more ways. Blood was enough. 

Patience made them strong, but it had not shielded Leia from the pain of childbirth. Ben had breeched, and Leia believed she was dying, her crying call echoing through the galaxy, waking him with the stabbing pains where the baby would have been if he had a woman’s body. He’d had many near calls, but none compared to the stabbing pain, as if a knife was being pierce to the outside from within. 

Luke had even felt Han. He held Leia’s hand and they Force connected, his hopes and fears willing him to believe in all that crap so long as it saved Leia. 

Patience is what quickened his step to get to her now. Luke felt suddenly that he didn’t have enough time, and that his greatest virtue was fast becoming his worst flaw. Patience hadn’t changed a damn thing.

She seemed to be waiting for him and didn’t even turn around when he approached her on the terrace.

Another handful of years had dissolved between them, and the only thing that had changed was that they had dragged Han into it. This once temporary rest stop for Leia had become her permanent home. Traces of her husband and Chewie were everywhere, but they did not carry their energy. 

“I saw it, too,” she said as she stared out at Coruscant. “Vader’s mask. I finally got to sleep after watching that awful arena holo, Tython’s Destruction, and there he was, right atop a gigantic noctopus.” She paused for a moment. “I hadn’t thought about him in years.”

“That’s funny.” He went to stand next to her. “I think about him every single day of my life.”

She smiled. “Naturally. We’ve always been different, you and I.” She touched his face. “Blue eyes. Light hair.” She softly pinched his nose. “Ugly ass beak.” She touched her own with the tip of her finger. “Tiny cute nose.”

“Very cute,” he said it so seriously Leia burst out laughing.

He came forward and took her softly by the throat, his hand lazily drawing to the back of her neck.

“Gorgeous brown hair,” he said, his fingers pressing along her spine, making her close her eyes with the sensation. 

“You like to do that,” she said, smiling. “I remember, I was surprised that you liked that.”

“Want me to do it again?”

She nodded slowly. 

Luke curled his finger into a fist, bringing with him a good bulk of her long brown locks. Pleasurable heat descended in a wave down her spine, and as his hand tightened around her hair, the soft sensation became sharp at the core where her neck and head met.

The pain was exquisite and gradual. She hadn’t realized her mouth had opened and she had closed her eyes again. They had rarely moved, but her heart thumped against her chest.

Luke smiled. “Perfect eyes,” he said, slightly picking her up and kissing her. 

They made up for lost time, the dreadful fear of having made a mistake fading away as their kiss deepened. There was no hesitation this time, no young lovers stealing away in the night like in the famous myths. The good ones always ascended to Tho Yor and were granted the secrets of the universe. The bad ones descended to planetary cores, dropped in fantastical hells were they had to fight beasts and clones and cross wits with old wizards. 

They came apart, and Luke gently released her hair. His hands glided down her sides to hold her. “You’re gonna laugh at me again.”

“I hope so.”

“I need a ship.”

She didn’t laugh, but she grinned. She kissed him again, softly and for a long time. “Maybe if you did that hair thing to all those sentients who refused you so long ago, you would’ve gotten to that Temple in half the time and we could’ve done this sooner.”

“Add that to the list of regrets.”

They came together again for another kiss. 

Luke became grave. “A big ship. I need to take them away, all of them. They’re all in danger. And… and my wife and daughter, too.”

Leia felt his conflicting emotions. She knew he would marry the first woman he seriously committed himself too, but she had placed his children far away in a future she could not see. 

She squeezed her hands on his arms and nodded. “Of course. Anything.” She thought perhaps it might be Snoke, but he’d tell her immediately if it was. 

“No,” Luke assured her, picking up on her thought. “One of his agents. He’s in the Temple. The younger children might be easier to protect, but the older ones. Ben is popular when he wants to be.” Luke told her of Vader’s mask being real, kept safe and clean. He didn’t need to investigate to know it was Ben’s doing.

“I thought you burned it,” said Leia.

“I thought so, too, but he found it. The mask was infused with the Force. He’s had it for years, probably found it back when-“

“Back when we returned to Yavin IV for the anniversary.” Leia looked down and pressed her head to his chest. “It doesn’t matter what we do.” 

Luke lifted her head with his hands. 

“He’s haunting us, Luke.” Her nails dug into his arms. She cursed Vader’s name with a mixture of awe and resignation. “Punishing us from the grave.”

“No,” said Luke fervently. “His last thoughts were of you, Leia. He was sorry.”

This feeling was new. She had never been furious at Luke before. “Does that change what he did?”

“No, but it doesn’t erase what he was. After the fall, that night on Endor when we were celebrating with the Ewoks, remember? I saw him. Not as he died, but as he was. He had been young like us. Like you. He had your brown hair, and your smile. I’d never thought I’d see that.”

“Pretty thought.” She said, unable to hold onto the rage, not with Luke’s arms wrapped around her. But just as an apology didn’t fix a wrong with a tight nice bow, neither did fuming at ghosts. She shook her head, honestly baffled. “Is that our legacy? To be happy, but only when we’re dead?”

“Maybe ‘until we’re dead’ works better, I think,” he said, his sincerity making the statement not completely gloomy.

He had wrinkles on his eyes; his temples were going to white. Age suited him. 

Leia tilted her head and smiled, nodding slowly again. 

“What?” He asked.

“So you need a ship to escape from an evil Sith lord. We have a whole insurance guild when some hothead checks the box.”

Luke looked long into her eyes. “He _was_ sorry, Leia. I think he meant it.”

She bit down on her teeth. “I accept his apology. I do not forgive him. As if it wasn’t enough with Ben. Who else is coming, Luke, it it isn’t—“

“It will be over soon. I’ll raze the Temple. It’s dangerous living there anyways.”

“Tython’s Destruction,” Leia said.

“Something like that.”

Tatooine had been a megacity back then, and the core capital, Coruscant, was just another spec on the trade route connecting all planets to the center of the Jedaii, the planet Tython. 

Luke hugged her. The hand that had pulled her hair now stroked the length of it down her back. If they stayed together any longer, they’d kiss again. Fifteen years of self-control down the worm.

“I hate it,” he said, sounding like he didn’t hate anything at all. “I hate leaving you.”

“You’re not leaving me. You’re going to help our son.”

Leia kissed him on the cheek and temple, lingering. “I’ll upload the info of a Dreadnaught to your speeder.”

“Stop, you’re getting me hot and bothered.”

Leia had to wrench herself away from his hands to get to the datapad on the table. She started clicking, not minding that Luke took this chance to simply look on her. “Big boys and their big ships,” she said. She commandeered the war ship with a swipe of her finger.

He turned around before he left. She watched him, too, smiling. Then she caught her breath when he came back to her. They kissed one final time and he left.

Leia smiled wide, and she covered her mouth as if to hide. Then she heard it. A long exhale. The sound unmistakable and hitting all of her recognition senses. It was a sound she heard almost every morning for ten years.

“You’re gonna kill me, aren’t you?”

Leia’s heart sank. 

Han came out of the den just around the corner, further into the apartment. He had a bag with him, stepped right up to her and showed her the little creatures inside.

“They’re called Ysalamiri. They block the Force. Hauling a whole crate of them. I took a detour and wanted a nap. So I stopped here.”

“Han. I’m so sorry.” She didn’t know what else to say. “It didn’t happen how you think…it doesn’t happen at all. It hasn’t in a long time.”

“There’s the first time, obviously. Ben.”

Leia couldn’t read his face. He was breathing hard, holding it together. “And a second time, a couple years later. You were away and…”

“It just happened.”

She never tried to explain it, not to anyone, much less to herself, but she owed Han the truth. “The first time was curiosity. We had started to read each other’s thoughts. Seemed strangely unsurprising. The second time I wanted to.”

Leia wanted to tell him that it wasn’t Luke. It was Ben. Something in the blood, perhaps. She didn’t know. She couldn’t understand it. Talking about sleeping with Luke steered her clear of having to explain why she truly sent Ben to him.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “We were cowards.”

Han expected that. He grabbed the bag and made his way to leave. The exact same way Luke left. If he had gone underground, he’d have seen the Falcon and known Han was there, but the kid never parked his X-Wing where he couldn’t reach it with a couple of leaps and twirls.

Luke was far away, reentering the ancient Temple’s violent atmosphere, a storm brewing, headed straight for the pyramid. He settled his wing at the entrance and went to the closed mausoleum that held Vader’s mask. His Force powers did not work, then suddenly, it did. 

There was a small step to get to the mantelpiece. Luke carefully picked up Vader’s mask when he heard it. A lightsaber igniting behind him. 

He turned to face Ben.

Ben pointed his lightsaber and it shook violently in his hand. “Are you going to take it from me?”

Luke was compelled to say yes, but he gently set Vader’s mask back down. He touched its gray brow, unable to feel the Force on it like before.

“Are you?!” Ben demanded.

“He was your grandfather. I can’t deny you that.”

“Yet you sully his memory at every turn.”

Luke rarely spoke of Vader, and when he did so he placed him on the galactic scale. One part of an organized whole. A working, thriving world enclosed in metal, fueled by subatomic particles, guided by a mad Emperor’s allegiance to a dark terrifying force.

“You have all of this power and yet you sit on it. Hold it for yourself.”

Luke felt his son through the Force for the first time in his life. A stranger stared back. Ben’s anger was a pale reflection of his mother’s fierceness, and Han’s bravery was serving him now for a truth he utterly believed, but was entirely false.

Luke wasn’t worthy. 

Of what he wasn’t worthy of, Luke could not say. “We’re leaving this place. It was a mistake coming here. The Sith...”

Ben raised the lightsaber higher and laughed darkly. “The Sith.” He said, the two syllables elongated, full of personal rage. ”Destroyed.” 

“The Jedi were destroyed, too, Ben. You can’t pick and choose which history you’re going to follow. That is how one becomes ignorant.”

He groaned. “Ignorance? Is that what destroyed the Empire? Destroyed whole worlds after the New Republic set it free? How many invasions? How many damn times can there be peace talks? You want me to learn the history of the world, Father. So it can tell me that after every Peace Talk there is war. After every treaty is signed, another is broken. You tore one despot down and a hundred more took their place.” A little smile hung on his lip. “Oh yes, you think I didn’t know you fucked your own sister? I figured it out not that long ago. Makes sense, don’t you think. The tainted son comes to. Saves the galaxy.”

Luke did not fear Ben, but he knew better than to enter his fighting space. Ben was pacing, trying to draw Luke in for a physical altercation. He wanted to come off as brazen, but Luke could sense the lie. Snoke had told Ben the truth of his parentage and used it to manipulate him. 

“You are not tainted, Ben.”

Ben stopped dead cold. “You say that like you didn’t spend your entire life away from me and my mother. To protect her, I guess. Then at the first sign of something extraordinary, she sends me off with you. Imagine my surprise when all I saw was a a lying hermit. Power wasted, gone. Everything destroyed because you didn’t act.”  
Ben turned off his lightsaber and stood up straight. Calmly, he said, “Now you’re going to pay, Father.” 

That’s when Luke heard it: a piercing cry breaking through the dark Force energy blocking anything from entering the Temple. 

Luke wanted desperately to run to it, but he slowly walked a wide berth around Ben. “What have you done?”

“Please.” He stepped aside to let him pass. “Go on. Explain to your wife why everyone is dead.”

Luke set off through the Temple, the halls making him dizzy. The closer he got to the outside, the louder the cries became. He stepped out to a thunderstorm, hot red sabers cutting through small blue and black shadows. He turned on his saber with one hand, and clicked on the com link with the other. “Take the shuttle. Go. Take Rey!”

His wife’s voice returned in a frantic rush: “But Luke!”

“Go now!”

Rain and thunder roared together, the Dark Side of the Force invading every drop, every crack, shaking the earth itself. Luke made a beeline for a Padawan who was fighting for her young life against an older masked attacker, another student. The attacker killed her with one of Luke’s moves, running away before Luke could best him.

All of the attackers ran away, all of them were masked and robed. All of them took more than one life, cutting down those that got in their way. There were only twenty-three of them. Boys and girls as young as eight and older rag tag space hoppers no older than twenty, kids with strong affinities with the Force and had survived on their own. One of them had even chosen to not become a Jedi, but she remained at the Temple to study the continents on the other hemisphere. Luke couldn’t find her body and there were the unmasked Padawans further ahead who were still fighting for their lives. 

Luke placed himself between the groups. “To the escape pods. Destroy the ones we won’t use.” They ran. 

The masked Padawans had formed a line.

Luke cried, unable to hear himself in the noise of the Force storm, staring at the pool of bodies. 

Ben came up from behind. He kicked Luke in the back of his knees, and Luke dropped. “Not so powerful you can’t sense your own flesh and blood. At least you gave me that. An aversion to you.”

“Snoke is using you for your power,” Luke said plainly. He was not afraid.

Ben looked upward, smiling, and the ground underneath Luke cracked. 

One innocent Padawan did not get away. He was pushed into Ben’s arms. 

“Ben, please.”

Ben settled him down and stepped aside. He used a soft placating voice in a way that curdled the blood. “I have a different name now. Would you like to know it?”

The Padawan shook from fear, nodding desperately. Axon. Unlike many of Luke’s students, Axon had two parents and a slew of siblings waiting for him back on his home world. He was Ben’s age. 

And he looked at Luke. 

Luke could not rise. The more he moved the more the earth shattered and shook, threatening to swallow them all. 

Ben gestured to his masked followers. They obeyed, passing a mask along the line. 

A shiver went down Luke’s spine as Ben put the bulky black thing on.

Ben became a faceless shadow amongst many faceless shadows. He tore his lightsaber into the Axon’s chest. The ground behind him fell away completely when he lunged too late to stop it. Axon fell into his arms and rolled off his legs when he fell to his knees.

“Would you like to know my new name, Father?” asked Ben’s mechanical, altered voice. 

Luke stared at the empty eyes. “I already know it.”

The words, _Kylo Ren is mine_ , echoing underneath another roar. His wife’s ship ascended to space, lightning threatening to force it off course. Bluer than mother nature tended to provide, even here on this Force rich planet where Force storms were common.

Luke took the chance to hit Snoke back with the Force storm that had brewed around them. Ben was no more than a vessel, full of infinite energy and will, guided by Snoke’s helm. A ship was lost without it’s captain. Snoke felt something like a slap. 

Kylo Ren turned his lightsaber on, his stance carefully chosen. A kill swing. One shot.

“I’m not going to fight you, Ben.”

“Is that the legacy you and Han Solo wish to impart?”

“Han loves you.”

“Yet he did not stop you and my mother from taking me away from him.”

Kylo lunged. 

Luke had never felt more tired and lost in his life, but he easily evaded the sloppy attack. The kill shot was sacrificed by impulse, and Kylo had to lose and regain balance too quickly to have any effect. 

Not that it stopped him from spinning around in a showy flourish. Luke had watched the young Padawan fighting style change and adapt throughout the years. That Kylo couldn’t see a flaw in this didn’t occur to him. 

“I will become greater than you ever were. I will prove that I am a true Skywalker. Grandfather’s legacy –“

Luke hooked his lightsaber and reached with his robotic hand. He froze Kylo and suspended him a foot in the air.

“Are you going to kill me?” Kylo asked.

“I wouldn’t fight you, why would I kill you?”

He shook, trying to free himself from the Force hold, but it was impossible. Luke had more than a decade honing his skills. They came to him as natural as breathing. 

“I will kill you one day. I swear it.”

He left Kylo with his people and returned to the Temple to burn it down. The spirit couldn’t frighten anyone when everyone was dead, but it was too dangerous to keep erect.

Besides R2, Luke took nothing with him and left, routing his ship the farthest from the rendezvous point he had agreed with his wife. No one stopped him, but he felt Kylo watching his personal X-Wing leaving the planet. The Force storm was beyond Snoke’s control, beyond Ben’s, and it concentrated on the energy converging at the burn site.

R2 beeped a question. 

“No. I won’t.” 

Luke typed out a message and had R2 send it through the gold channels to Leia. Three small sentences. They’re all dead. I’m sorry. I failed.

R2 made a concerned sound. The words coming up on the screen: Return to Coruscant?

Luke did not answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all! If you’ve stuck around for that super downer ending, then kudos to you! Thank you for enduring the plotlessness and singular fuck! I too was disappointed at the lack of kissing in chapter 5 and thought: you know what would be even _worse_ than full on angst fighting, what if I make them kiss a lot and have them be super happy and hopeful right before I destroy their lives! 
> 
> In conclusion. Six chapters is a super long fic for me and I honestly didn’t think I could do it (~woes of a writer snipped bc u don’t need more angst). Your comments and kudos were hella encouraging and I want more of them! SO COMING SOON: A seven chapter action adventure happy romantic Luke/Leia au fic (with lots of longing, flirting, kissing and incest confusion) based on the popular prompt of Luke and Leia switching narratives (Luke raised on Alderaan/Leia raised on Tatooine). I’m calling it _The Diamond Caverns of Muun_ because I’m an idiot who loves the Flash Gordonness of the Star Wars universe. Spoiler alert: Muun (MONGO!) is the homeworld of Darth Plagueis, the Sith lord who trained Emperor Palpatine. Will there be diamonds? Will there be caverns? Will another Sith lord cockblock our Twins? I have four rough chapters and an ending, so I already know! Soon you will to and hopefully you’ll have as much fun reading it as I’ve had writing it. Expect: lots of coincidences. Lots of romance. Lots of escaping from monsters. Lots of Leia running to Luke and them swinging away Edgar Rice Burroughs style. 
> 
> Love, peace and chicken grease!


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